


The Gates Are Open

by RoSH (RoSH95)



Category: Dororo (Anime 2019)
Genre: AU, Blood and Gore, Canon Trans Character, Dark Fantasy, Demon slaying, Demons, Discussions of gender, Graphic Body Horror, Loss of Limbs, Other, Sibling Relationship, Trans Character, Transphobia, living doll
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-18 18:49:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20317780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoSH95/pseuds/RoSH
Summary: The first thing his eyes catch on are the enormous stone doors standing ajar in the middle of the room. There are horrifying carvings of torture, death, and despair on each door, and beyond it lies a swirling chasm of empty, cold nothingness so deep and dark Dororo feels it goes on forever.And then he notices the man standing with his feet just barely on the ground, suspended by a rope attached to the ceiling and tied to his wrists, directly in front of the doors, his head bowed, a sheathed katana loosely clutched in one of his strangely blocky hands. He’s dressed strangely, wearing clothes that wouldn’t be out of place pre-Meiji period, with long black hair pulled up in a ponytail.





	The Gates Are Open

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is! The first chapter of the Dororo fanfic I've been talking about writing for ages!! I just finished my summer classes so I finally had time to finish it :) I've been so excited to share this with you all! I can't wait to hear what you think of it XD
> 
> Gashadokuro: Skeletal giants which wander the countryside in the darkest hours of the night. If they should happen upon a human out late on the roads, the gashadokuro will silently creep up and catch their victims, crushing them in their hands or biting off their head.

_Dororo_

If there’s one thing Dororo has learned from his life as an orphaned runaway and petty thief, it’s how to run like the fucking devil himself is chasing him. Or in this case, like a giant skeleton is trying to eat him. Seriously. _What the fuck_.

The night started off normal enough.

Dororo charmed a wealthy older woman into buying him ramen, and didn’t slit her purse because she didn’t even ask him once if there was someone she should call to come pick him up and she got him ice cream for dessert. Then he got a hot chocolate from the local cafe and mooched off the free internet for a while. He got on the last bus out of town because he doesn’t like staying in one place for too long in case someone recognizes him.

The bus had maybe three other sleepy passengers on it and the driver barely even glanced at his bus pass before waving him on. Dororo dozed off curled against a window in the back, his backpack held protectively over his chest like a shield.

He doesn’t know what happened. One minute, he was having a strange dream involving a Christmas party with the rich, conceited assholes he robbed blind this week, and the next, someone was screaming and the bus was rolling. Dororo thinks he didn’t break his neck out of sheer dumb luck. He doesn’t think he’s so lucky once the bus comes to a stop on its side and he looks out the window at a giant, skeletal figure.

The giant reaches down and the glass windows _crunch_ and shatter beneath bony fingers the size around of trees. There’s a scream, and Dororo watches in horror as the woman cowering near the front of the bus is plucked from her hiding place and pulled from the bus. The skeleton brings her to eye level, and then her terrified screams cut out suddenly as it tightens its grip, bright red spilling over the bones.

Dororo doubles over and vomits.

His eyes catch on the man that was sitting closest to him when he’s done, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle, eyes wide and sightless, and nearly throws up again. He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and crawls as quietly as he can to where the emergency exit door is hanging by its hinges.

He spends a few moments lurking in the shadow of the bus, calculating the distance to the tree line and how to get there without being noticed. When the monster reaches down to pluck another terrified passenger from the belly of the bus, Dororo stops thinking about it and just sprints.

The skeleton rattles behind him and Dororo risks a glance back at it and squeaks in terror when he sees it stomping after him, every bone rattling with each step and both hands stained red. He faces forward again and runs as fast as he can, weaving between trees to dodge swipes of its claws.

With the rush of adrenaline in his veins, Dororo doesn’t feel the fatigue at first, and he leads the monster on a chase through the deepest part of the forest, trying to lose it in the density of the trees. But the skeleton always seems to know where he is, even when he’s hidden from sight. He’s panting and every muscle in his body is burning when he passes under the first rotten _torii_.

Abruptly, the skeleton stops rattling and Dororo trips over a root and nearly falls flat on his face. He catches himself before he falls, but his shaking legs won’t support his weight anymore and fold beneath him, sending him to his knees. He expects to feel the skeleton’s bony fingers closing around him, crushing him slowly, but there’s only the faint sound of wind rustling the leaves.

Dororo looks back and lets out an embarrassingly high-pitched scream when he sees the monster crouched beyond the archway he just passed under, its empty eye sockets staring unerringly at him. He scrambles back until he’s backed against a tree, but the skeleton makes no move to reach for him. He whimpers and slumps against the tree, his entire body shaking with fear and the loss of adrenaline.

Gradually, the panic recedes enough that the rush of blood and pounding of his heart in his ears fades and he can hear the sounds of the forest around him. The skeleton is still crouched, unnaturally still, just beyond the archway, as though it marks some sort of invisible barrier the monster can’t breach.

There’s an overgrown pathway leading away from the arch, deeper into the forest towards the mountains. Curious, and eager to get away from the monster—because he doesn’t trust invisible barriers anymore than he trusts that old hobo on the street corner that sometimes lets Dororo share his umbrella when it’s raining—Dororo pushes himself to his feet and sets off down the path.

He only glances back once, and the skeleton is still where he left it, its head the only thing that’s moved to keep its empty eye sockets trained on him. Dororo walks faster.

~

Dororo doesn’t notice at first when the trees around him start to get bigger and taller and thicker, their foliage denser and blocking out more of the sky. He’s more focused on sticking to the path and putting as much distance between himself and the skeleton as he possibly can before it decides it’s tired of waiting and comes after him again. But then he has to climb over a tree root that comes up to his shoulder and there’s no denying it anymore; the trees around him are unnaturally huge.

The wind sounds strange whistling through the trees when they’re this big, and Dororo swears he sees the shadows of giant animals—even bigger than the skeleton—moving through the forest. By the time he comes to the second _torii_, less rotten than the first, he’s jumpy and panicky, his heart rate skyrocketing at every shadow and sound.

He passes under a third _torii_ and then all of a sudden, he’s among the rubble of a shrine, the stone stairs cracked and covered with moss, and eerie lights shining in each of the _tōrō_ lanterns. The roof of the _shamusho_ has caved in just past the shoji doors, making them impassible. All the strange and terrifying forest sounds had fallen silent the moment he passed under the _torii_, and Dororo feels like someone is breathing ice on the back of his neck.

Wrapping his arms around his torso, Dororo picks his way over the rubble of the stairs and skirts around the lanterns to move cautiously towards the _honden_, guarded by rubble _komainu_ statues.

“This is the part in the horror movie where I would be screaming ‘_No! Turn around you idiot! You’re about to die horribly!_’” Dororo mutters to himself. He never claimed to be _smart_, okay? He ran away from his foster home and dropped out of high school to become a thief full time. He’s kind of dumb.

Hey, at least he’s self-aware.

The stairs leading up to the temple are a little more preserved than the rest of the shrine, but Dororo still takes them carefully. He pauses in front of the great, wooden doors to the _haiden_. They _creak_ horribly when he pushes them open, like something out of a horror movie, as if this whole night hasn’t been something out of a horror movie and Dororo keeps hoping he’ll just wake up to find it was just a dream.

The smell of blood is heavy in the air, hanging like a thick shroud over everything. Dororo claps his hand over his mouth and nose as he bites back the urge to puke. Peering through the gloom, the dark, wet stains on the stone floors and walls take a much darker, more sinister light.

He chokes back his horror and stumbles forward, through the _heidan_ to the carved, wooden doors of the sanctuary. They collapse inwards at his touch, the hinges completely rotted away, and Dororo falls to his knees inside the sanctuary.

The air is cleaner here, somehow, and Dororo takes several deep, heaving gasps of air before he looks up to survey the sanctuary.

The first thing his eyes catch on are the enormous stone doors standing ajar in the middle of the room. There are horrifying carvings of torture, death, and despair on each door, and beyond it lies a swirling chasm of empty, cold nothingness so deep and dark Dororo feels it goes on forever.

And then he notices the man standing with his feet just barely on the ground, suspended by a rope attached to the ceiling and tied to his wrists, directly in front of the doors, his head bowed, a sheathed katana loosely clutched in one of his strangely blocky hands. He’s dressed strangely, wearing clothes that wouldn’t be out of place pre-Meiji period, with long black hair pulled up in a ponytail.

Dororo’s breath catches in his throat and he stumbles backward, tripping over his feet and falling on his back staring up at the man in horror, as what he’s seeing catches up with him, because _there’s no possible way this man is alive_.

The man’s face is smooth and featureless, no eyes or nose, only a slit where the mouth should be. His arms and legs are made of crudely carved wood. A human sized doll. It’s almost more terrifying than the skeleton, and Dororo is so frightened he’s starting to feel lightheaded.

Actually, no he’s just hyperventilating.

Still terrifying.

Dororo puts his head down between his knees and counts the spaces between his breaths, trying to even them out back to something normal. Its only because he’s so hyper aware of his own breathing that he hears the sound of another’s breathing at all.

Dororo jerks his head up and holds his breath. The other’s breathing cuts off after a few breaths, and doesn’t start up again until Dororo does, as if it’s imitating him.

Dororo looks around the sanctuary, but there’s no one else aside from himself and the doll. He bites his lip and squints at the doll, trying to see the barest hint of the doll’s chest rising and falling with the pattern of his breathing, and he squeaks when he sees it. It’s barely there, and flutters like a baby bird at the edge of its nest preparing for its first flight, but the doll is _breathing_. _Living_.

He stumbles towards the doll/man/human/creature—he doesn’t even know _what_ to call them anymore, but holy shit, how are they _alive_?!—on unsteady feet, reaching for the swiss army knife he keeps in the back pocket of his jeans to cut through the ropes binding the living doll’s wrists. However, as soon as he touches the creature, they jerk away with a whimper, their head thrashing weakly from side to side, and feet scrambling backwards as much as they can on the floor, only for the rope to swing them forward again.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Dororo says, trying to speak calmly and quietly, despite how much his voice is shaking with fear. He doesn’t think it would help when the doll is _clearly_ even more terrified than he is right now. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Can you feel it when I touch you?”

As he waits for an answer, he notices that the doll is trying to match their breathing up to his again, and starts up a loud, even rhythm for them to follow.

When they’ve calmed down, he tries again, “Can you feel it when I touch you?” and gets a jerky nod of the head. “Okay, and that’s scary?” Another nod. “You don’t want me to do that?”

This time the doll hesitates. They shuffle their feet and clench their hands so their wooden fingers _cla-cla-clack _around the katana sheath. But they don’t shake their head.

“Is it alright if I touch you?” Dororo asks, and they give the barest hint of a nod. He reaches out to touch their face, then pauses, thinking better of it, and says, “I’m gonna touch your face now, is that okay?”

He gets another tiny nod, so he brushes his fingers against the strange, leathery skin of the doll’s face. Its unexpectedly warm beneath his fingers. They make a surprised noise, but lean into the touch instead of jerking away this time, so Dororo figures it must feel good to be touched after so long alone.

He drags his fingers down the side of the doll’s face and neck to press against the right side of their chest, feeling a surprisingly strong heartbeat under the palm of his hand, and he doesn’t know quite what to make of it.

“Hey,” Dororo says, after a long moment of silence, “I need to cut you down from there.”

The doll tilts their head to the side, like they’re considering him, then gives a little nod, almost like they’re saying, “do what you have to.”

“I’ll need to hold your wrists steady while I cut through the rope,” Dororo explains, touching the doll’s wrists gently. And then he has to reevaluate his plan, because the doll is a few inches taller than him, and the spot he needs to reach to cut them free is just out of his reach. “Give me a few minutes to find something to stand on.” He tells them with a groan, and turns away to look around the sanctuary for a chair or something.

The doll squirms behind him, distracting Dororo from his task and he turns to look back at them. They’ve got one wrist twisted awkwardly, fingers curled to point into the corner behind them.

Dororo blinks stupidly for a second, and it takes the doll croaking, “Th-_ere_. Bo-x,” for him to get the message. Seriously he didn’t even _realize_ the doll could speak, though he supposes it would make sense, since they whimpered before, why wouldn’t they be able to speak as well?

He scrambles away from them and quickly pulls the box out of the pile of rubble in the corner, dragging it back to the doll’s side and stepping on top of it.

“Hold still,” Dororo tells them, taking their right wrist in hand and flicking open his swiss army knife to begin sawing through the rope. While he’s cutting, Dororo says, “Do you have a name? Mine’s Dororo!”

“…Hya-kkimaru,” the doll responds with their stilted speech, though it seems smoother than before.

“I was on my way to Kyoto from Osaka,” Dororo tells them. “I used to live in Akaiwa, but I ran away last year. When you reach level two friendship, you’ll unlock my tragic backstory, but we’re not there yet. Anyways, I try not to stay in one place too long anymore.”

It takes two whole minutes just to get the one wrist free, because Dororo isn’t able to keep his knife sharp anymore. He really only keeps it for the lock picking tool. He keeps chattering to Hyakkimaru the whole time while the doll tilts their head up at him, indicating their attention. He wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand and gently eases the right arm down to Hyakkimaru’s side.

“Halfway there, now,” Dororo says cheerfully, taking the left wrist and, being careful of the katana, begins to cut it loose as well.

Two minutes later, that wrist is free, and Dororo is forced to catch Hyakkimaru as their legs crumple, unable to support their weight. They’re heavier than he expects, and he has to lower them both to the floor carefully before he drops them entirely.

He makes to settle Hyakkimaru on the floor, but the doll clutches his arm and makes noises of protest, so Dororo leans back against the box, cradling Hyakkimaru back against his chest, even though it’s a little awkward when their frame is bigger and broader than his.

Hyakkimaru sighs and turns their face into his neck, murmuring, “_Warm_,” and sending goosebumps up Dororo’s skin where they breathe.

Dororo is _so_ ill equipped to be dealing with this. Touch starved living dolls are not something he was taught how to respond to in school! Is this one of those things he would have learned if he hadn’t dropped out and run away? Somehow, he sincerely doubts it.

Dororo looks back up at the huge doors he and Hyakkimaru are sitting across from, studying the strange, elegant carvings in the stone. He wonders what they’re doing here; what purpose they serve; who put them there? For what reason was the living doll left alone in the hall in front of these doors with a katana in their hand?

“What is this place?” Dororo wonders aloud.

Hyakkimaru shudders, and Dororo almost misses their words. “The Gates of Hell,” they tell him.

Dororo’s throat clicks audibly when he swallows, and suddenly the doors look so much more sinister when he looks back up at them.

“Let’s get out of here,” he suggests, and Hyakkimaru nods eagerly. “Can you stand?”

He gets to his feet and offers a hand to Hyakkimaru, forgetting for a moment that they can’t see, but they take his hand unerringly and use it to pull themself to their feet, wobbling unsteadily for a moment before they regain their balance. Dororo sticks close to them just in case, but they walk side by side out of the _honden_ and into the offertory hall, which still holds the suffocating smell of blood.

Hyakkimaru doesn’t react to the smell, but they make a noise of concern when Dororo chokes and claps a hand over his nose and mouth.

Dororo shakes his head and says, “Just be glad you can’t smell,” by way of explanation.

Somehow, Hyakkimaru still manages to look concerned without any facial features.

Dororo heads for the worship hall, eager to get back outside to fresh air, but Hyakkimaru stops him about midway down the hall and points to the wall on their right.

“Something there,” they say softly, wooden fingers tightening on the hilt of their katana.

“You don’t even have eyes!” Dororo protests, “How do you know?”

Hyakkimaru tilts their head, thinking. They turn towards Dororo and cup his cheek with one hand. “You are here. White-soul,” they say. “Stone walls on either side. Blue-soul. Wood above and on me. Green-soul.” They point at the wall to their right. “It’s paper. Yellow-soul. And beyond it… purple.”

Dororo blinks at the sudden influx of words from Hyakkimaru, more than Dororo’s gotten out of him. He looks at the wall Hyakkimaru indicated.

“Its fake, huh?” he asks, and Hyakkimaru nods. Dororo grins. “That’s pretty handy, _Aniki_. What does ‘purple’ mean, then?”

“Don’t know,” Hyakkimaru replies, looking as troubled as one can without a face.

Probably nothing good, then. Dororo steps closer to Hyakkimaru and winds his fingers into the sleeve of the doll’s black _kosode_. He shadows Hyakkimaru as they walk up to the false wall and push the paper aside, revealing a short hallway with bloodstained shoji doors at the end, firelight flickering on the other side and highlighting the bright red spatter.

Dororo strangles his whimper before it gets past his throat, but Hyakkimaru seems to be developing some sort of sixth sense when it comes to Dororo, because they ask, “What’_sss_ wrong?” seeming to get a little caught around the ‘s.’

“There’s blood on the door,” Dororo tells them. “I’ve got a really bad feeling.”

Hyakkimaru herds Dororo behind them a little further with their arm as they unsheathe their katana, creeping forward on surprisingly silent feet.

“Stay close,” they tell him as they reach the door.

Dororo peeks over their shoulder as they slide the door open, their katana held at the ready in case something jumps out and attacks them. But there’s nothing in the room beyond that’s capable of attacking.

Dororo feels like his eyes are going to pop out of his skull as he takes in the scene, and then he promptly turns around and throws up whatever is left in his stomach. Mostly fluids, at this point.

He doesn’t want to think about what this room was supposed to be used for in a _shrine_ with all those bloody scalpels, bone saws, and skinning knives. _And the bodies_.

There are about a dozen mutilated corpses in the room, all wearing traditional _kannushi _robes. Their skin has been peeled away, their arms and legs hacked off, and their eyes scooped out of their sockets.

Hyakkimaru touches Dororo’s shoulder and points to the center of the room, where a circle of candlesticks is arranged around a single mangled paper doll. Like the corpses, the doll’s arms and legs have been removed. There are two bloody dots in the center of its head and streaks of blood lining the rest of its body.

“What is it?” Dororo asks.

“_Katashiro_,” Hyakkimaru replies. “Substitution doll. Takes the evil in place of person whose name is on the doll. _Or_ does evil to the person whose name is on the doll.”

Dororo glances around at the corpses. “Does it matter which?” he asks weakly.

Hyakkimaru shrugs. Dororo winces and, carefully avoiding looking at any of the bodies, picks his way over to the doll.

He gingerly picks it up between his thumb and forefinger, turning it over to read the name written on it.

“Daigo Mutsu,” he reads aloud. “Is this the name of the person who’s place the doll took?”

Hyakkimaru shrugs again, completely unhelpful.

“I wonder what happened to all these guys, then, if the _katashiro_ doll was supposed to take Mutsu’s place,” Dororo muses, glancing around the room, but letting his eyes glaze over so he’s not really seeing the corpses.

“Rebound,” Hyakkimaru grunts, but doesn’t elaborate on what they mean.

Dororo lets his eyes slide over the blood-soaked walls one more time, feeling a chill creep up his spine.

“This place gives me the creeps,” he decides. “Let’s get out of here, _Aniki_.”

~

Fifteen minutes later find Dororo and Hyakkimaru sitting outside on the steps of the temple, Dororo swishing water from the pond to rid himself of the taste of sick in his mouth. He spits the water out in the grass, and now he has a weird fishy aftertaste, but its better than vomit.

“I wish I had my backpack,” he says, pulling his legs up to his chest and resting his chin on his knees. He can feel Hyakkimaru’s attention on him, even though the doll is facing a different direction. “I could have really used those flavored water packets I carried around right about now.” He shivers as a particularly cold breeze seems to go straight through his skin to settle in his bones. “And my sweatshirt. _Geez_, I know it gets cold at night but this is ridiculous!”

He startles as a clunky, wooden arm settles over his shoulder, drawing him against the body next to him, where Hyakkimaru is surprisingly warm, given all their wooden body parts.

Dororo can’t help the way he flinches in response. He doesn’t like being touched. He supposes Hyakkimaru isn’t so bad; at least their wooden hands are blocky and clumsy, and unlikely to trigger anything. He wraps his arms more tightly around himself and then hesitantly leans further into Hyakkimaru’s side.

“…Too bad I left my backpack on the bus with the skeleton monster,” Dororo mumbles into his knees.

He’s pressed against Hyakkimaru from hip to shoulder, so he feels it when the doll stiffens.

“…Skeleton?” they repeat.

Dororo lifts his head and peers up at the tense line of Hyakkimaru’s shoulders, since he can’t use their face for reference to how they’re feeling.

“Um…” he says, and winces when Hyakkimaru tightens their hold on him, sucking in a sharp breath as it sends a lance of irrational panic through him. They release him immediately, withdrawing their arm and scooting back a little, and it reminds Dororo of where he is and who he’s with.

Dororo takes a breath and tries to explain, “I don’t actually know what it was, just that it was huge and skeletal and killed two people before I ran and it started chasing me. I was asleep when it appeared, so I don’t know where it came from either, but it flipped the bus I was on. I don’t know if anyone else escaped. Maybe, since I led it away when I ran, but I remember at least one person died when the bus flipped so I doubt it.”

Hyakkimaru stands abruptly, their wooden fingers clenched so tightly around the hilt of the katana Dororo can hear the hinges _creak_ in protest.

“Let’s go,” they say.

“Go? Where?” Dororo asks, startled, clambering to his feet and following after Hyakkimaru as the doll stalks off down the path Dororo followed to the shrine.

“I am Guardian,” Hyakkimaru replies, pausing to look back at Dororo. “Guard the Gate. Kill the Demons… Let’s go.”

And then they turn and continue down the path, and Dororo has to refrain from throwing his hands up and screaming in frustration. _Stupid fucking living dolls and their cryptic fucking bullshit_. Hyakkimaru just _couldn’t_ give him a straight answer?!

Dororo stomps after them, forgetting, for a moment, that maybe he should be a little more cautious going back in the direction of the giant skeleton monster that wants to crush him into red paste. He doesn’t think about how much noise he’s making, stomping and grumbling and sulking like he is, until a _crack!_ echoes through the forest and both he and Hyakkimaru freeze.

Dororo shoots a panicked glance at Hyakkimaru and that’s when he sees it; out of the corner of his eye, he spots a giant bone-white skeleton hand flying towards him, fingers hooked like claws. He barely has time to scream before it wraps around him, so tight it makes it painful to draw breath. And then, like a bungee cord, it snaps back, dragging him away from Hyakkimaru.

And Dororo can’t help the ragged, terrified scream of, “_Aniki!!_” being ripped from his throat even as he’s ripped from the safety the doll seems to emanate like a beacon.

There’s crushing pressure around his ribcage and a sharp rattling in his ears, and then everything goes dark.

_Hyakkimaru_

Hyakkimaru hears Dororo give a frightened scream and automatically reaches for his katana, but is too late to do anything before the red soul flame of the skeletal demon closes around Dororo’s bright, clear white and a wretched “_Aniki!!_” rends the air.

He launches himself after the demon and that speck of white with a superhuman speed his patchwork body should not possess, though he does not question where it comes from.

Letting Dororo die is _not an option_.

He’s barely half a step behind the skeletal demon, so he hears when it gives a terrible rattle and his heart clenches uncomfortably when Dororo cries out weakly. He knows he must end this quickly, for Dororo’s sake, so he casts his senses around for the demon’s weak spots and finds them in the form of concentrated pits of red in the demon’s soul; the wrist joints, kneecaps, spinal cord, and eye sockets.

He leaps, slicing through each red pit with lethal accuracy, gracefully making his way from the skeleton’s kneecaps to the spine to the wrists and then launching himself like a bullet straight through its eye socket and out the back of its skull.

The demon flame sputters and dies like a candle guttering in the wind, and Hyakkimaru plants his feet against the green-soul trunk of a tree and launches himself through the air to catch Dororo before the little white-soul can hit the ground.

He tucks the teen against his chest and rolls when they hit the dirt, landing in a crouch with Dororo still cradled in his arms like the precious cargo that he is. He hears the skeleton crumble into dust behind them and feels relief that the danger has passed.

He’s about to check Dororo for injuries when a sudden fire consumes him, burning over his false limbs and skin, eating away at the animal hide that protects his bare muscles from infection. He cries out in pain—has to drop Dororo’s limp form to the grassy earth before he causes further injury with his violent thrashing—and scratches at his false skin with blunt, useless, wooden fingers.

Suddenly, the world goes dark—darker than normal—but Hyakkimaru doesn’t lose consciousness. Instead he feels as if he’s been doused with cold water, the burn dissolved as though it had never been there and all the lights of the soul flames disappearing.

A memory slots into place. One that wasn’t there before. One of unbearable pain and the taste of iron in his mouth as he bites his tongue in an effort not to scream. Gloved hands holding him down with a steel grip as a skinning knife peels away his skin.

Hyakkimaru’s soul sight flickers back like someone lighting a match and he doubles over to cough up bile. There’s nothing in his stomach to throw up, but it doesn’t stop his stomach from turning and heaving.

Dororo makes a dazed, questioning sound from beside him and Hyakkimaru freezes as he feels the younger boy’s hand flop bonelessly against him, sliding against the skin on the back of his neck.

He can _feel _it. More than just pressure.

He sits up and wrenches his _kosode_ open, pressing wooden fingers against the skin of his chest, feeling the texture of the wood against his human skin. He has _human_ skin.

“_Aniki_?” Dororo mumbles, still sounding mostly out of it, and Hyakkimaru turns towards him, marveling at the feeling of his hair on the back of his neck and eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks. “Wha’s hap’ned?”

Hyakkimaru shuffles over to the little white soul, breathless with excitement, and gently grabs one of the younger boy’s hands to press against his cheek.

Dororo comes awake instantly with a gasp. “Holy _shit_, _Aniki_, you have _skin_!!” he shrieks, jolting upright. “What the fuck, dude! I pass out for five minutes and you somehow get _skin_?!”

Hyakkimaru’s arms can’t support him when he starts giggling, so he puts his head on Dororo’s shoulder and slumps against him. He can’t help it, Dororo’s excitement is contagious.

Dororo keeps his hands on him as Hyakkimaru catches his breath, rubbing circles on the back of his neck and memorizing the lines of his face with his fingers.

“You have skin…” Dororo says again, softly, almost disbelieving. Then, a little more insistent, more to himself. “You’re _human_…”

Hyakkimaru takes his hand again and presses it against his chest, where Dororo can feel his heartbeat. “Always been human,” he says.

Dororo’s soul is dim with sadness and pain, and Hyakkimaru doesn’t know how to fix it.

“How did you get your skin back?” Dororo asks.

“Demon had it,” Hyakkimaru tells him. “Got it when I killed the demon.”

“Why did the demon have your skin?” He can hear the frown in Dororo’s voice.

Hyakkimaru doesn’t have an answer to that so he just shrugs. He thinks of the memory that was returned along with his skin and suppresses a shudder. That’s not something he wants to share with Dororo. The pieces of his story that Dororo knows are dark enough without adding the true horror behind it all.

“Hey!” Dororo’s sudden shout breaks through Hyakkimaru’s thoughts. “I’ve got a great idea! I bet if one demon had your skin, there are other demons who have the rest of your body parts! Why don’t we hunt them down and get them back?”

As the Guardian of the Gates of Hell, its Hyakkimaru’s job to hunt demons who break through and reseal the gates. He doesn’t see why Dororo wants to come with, though.

He looks at the teen’s soul, which is bright white and happy again, and thinks maybe he’s just lonely.

“Dororo,” he says. “I’m hungry.”

There’s a pause and then Dororo gives an explosive snort of laughter, bright and happy like dawn after the terror of the night.

“Me too,” he says, after he catches his breath. “Let’s get something to eat! I bet you’d love McDonalds!”

Hyakkimaru has no idea what a McDonalds is but he’ll do anything to keep that brightness in Dororo’s soul.

“Let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did you think? About Dororo mistaking Hyakkimaru as a doll? About their blossoming relationship? About the memory that returned along with Hyakkimaru's skin?
> 
> As always, your comments give me life! If you like this, PLEASE leave a comment! Even if its just to scream incoherently, they make my day!! Thanks for reading!


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